


Hope Is Just Fear In Reverse

by j_knight13



Series: I take a bow and I fall off the stage [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: AU, Deaths, Future, I Don't Even Know, I don't know, Implied fem x fem, Kinda, Maybe - Freeform, Other, Sad Ending, Sort Of, Soulmates, What Have I Done, a bit of star trek, and a bit of guardians of the galaxy, and something else, characters die people, help me, how do I tag this piece of thing, i just watched Skyfall James bond, it helps when you spell your tags right, just read please, just weird, please?, space, these arent even tags they're random words, what happens when Chess is bored
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 05:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14325999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_knight13/pseuds/j_knight13
Summary: She's here on a mission. Z doesn't tell her what, and she wonders.





	Hope Is Just Fear In Reverse

She’s here on a mission. Z doesn't tell her what, and she wonders. A small marketplace in the middle of the galaxy, shady, all manners of folk, Zelinds and Astlianx and Emlix- but mostly Arvias, she notes, the creatures that the humans of long ago based their Elves on. Or that's what she thinks. She's curious, and has read all the ancient texts, or as many as her rank allows- on her ship, not many can access the solid texts. Far too precious, everything is digital now- only a few prints remain that the Minior, her rank, can access. She did find one, though, a work by a long-ago Earth-man named Tolkien, if she recalls correctly. The Elves in that are perhaps the closest thing to the Arvias. 

The Arvias are bright, dressed in brilliant shades of green and purple and red and blue. They have hair to match their colours, and streaks in their hair to match their rank. She doesn't know the Arvias ranking system, doesn't need to for her work. Her work is simple, to kill, probably why she's here today. Perhaps after this she’ll look into that, but she doubts it. She never really gets any time to.

She wanders around the market for half a frex, roughly an hour in old Earth times, she remembers absently. Buys some form of food with a few cubits (not the normal slush she has to eat, she notes with some suprise and pleasure) and a little amulet supposed to bring her luck. She doesn't believe in that sort of thing, but the tacky little object has some simple form of appeal to it, and she needs something to do. It's normal for some folk to never buy anything in markets, but they're normally Dealers, and Dealers attract Buyers. She doesn't want any unnecessary attention. Z eventually sends her the mission file. She brings it up in her retina implant, and skims it through. Her target is a Dealer, one of the Resistance. An Arvias. The picture come up, and she looks at it. Her target is a white Arvias. As rare as truth these days, she thinks, as rare as Hope. Perhaps when she gets the information required from the target, she could sell it- that's what the others who find rare beings do, in her Sector at least, but then she shakes her head. She doesn't need the extra cubits, and she isn't that cruel. 

The destination is a spacehouse near the edge of town, and when she arrives she easily snaps the neck of the waiting informant- not the target, but still Resistance, still needed to die. Then she hides in the shadows, easily blends, becoming part of the darkness. She has a good vantage point, but still doesn't see the target until it's almost too late- despite being a white Arvias, dressed in silver and gold, she easily hides. Then she steps into the light and stares straight up at her. The Arvias asks her if she’ll come down. She does, and they fight. She breaks her arm, but the advanced nano bites injected into her blood heal it quickly. She stabs the Arvias in the side, but the wound bleeds molten silver (she flinches when a drop lands on her, for it truely is molten) and cauterises itself. Then they stop, and she catches her breath and watches the Arvias who isn't even breathing any faster, who surveys her calmly. The dark skin of the being is a startling contrast to the white clothing of the being, she notes, and the silver eyes and full pink lips, and the swirling tattoos that cover her body, that shift in front of her eyes and change from silver to gold to white, to a mix of all three and back again. The target tells her her name, Alkirax, and asks her hers. She hesitates- she doesn't even know. So she shakes her head and says she sees no reason to tell her. Alkirax looks at her with something like pity, and something like curiousity. She watches her through bright, pupil-less silver eyes and asks why she doesn't leave the Service. She doesn't know. But she does. The Service is all she ever has known. 

Somehow they end up sitting warily beside each other, and Alkirax tells her about life beyond the Sectors, where every being is free, and she tells Alkirax about life in the Service. But then the Keeper comes, and she’s torn. For the first time in her life she knows she has a choice.

She remembers now. Her family, before the Keepers came. Before she became the best assassin in the entire Nth Sector. So when the Keeper demands she stands down, she doesn't. She keeps standing, remembering. The target, Alkirax, hisses at her to leave. Get out while she can, but she knows she can't. They'll find her and kill her. She's a great asset, a brilliant one, but there are others. She's kept because she's obedient, loyal, the perfect killer. The perfect slave. They can spare her, but not the information she has, however limited.

When the Keeper fires, she doesn't stop to think about it until she has a hole in her chest and Alkirax has killed it and is kneeling beside her, asking her why. She doesn't know. But she does. Alkirax has a purpose, she whispers. Ending this Haeil. She isn't needed, she whispers. She's the one helping create this Haeil. Alkirax is needed, she whispers. Not her. She has no place here. Never will. She dies painfully, but quickly. She dies with the closest thing she ever had to a smile on her face. In the end, she saved lives. In the end, she didn't end them. In the end, she died a hero. She died with a name on her lips. Her target’s name. Her death’s name. Her savior’s name. Her name.

It isn't often that you meet your second Half, Alkirax thinks as she presses her lips to the forehead of the being lying beside her. It isn't often your second Half is sent to kill you. It isn't often you are the reason your second Half dies. It's painful. She knows pain, or she thought she did. They both thought they did.

We didn't. I never did. Neither did she. 

I wonder if they won, the Resistance. So does Alkirax. We can't see much from the Afterlife. 

At least we’re not in Haeil.


End file.
